


Hideaway

by Feran_Sensei



Category: Thief (Video Game 2014), Thief (Video Games)
Genre: ALL THE GAY, Angst, Because i am a precious virgin child, Because oml im an angst bucket, Garrett is gay in this guys, Gay, Hurt/Comfort, I hope you can enjoy this too though ;_;, I need this in my life, Lawrence Eldridge, M/M, Major Original Character(s), Most likely not smutty, OC, So dont read it if you dont like gays???, These are all probably, Watch captain, but hey, but still, fight me, how tf do tags work, idk what im doing tbh, jk, okay, probably, you never know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 14:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14167224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feran_Sensei/pseuds/Feran_Sensei
Summary: Garrett isn't sure what to make of the new South Quarter Watch Captain, but if there's one thing he knows for certain, it's that Lawrence Eldridge has played this game before.Only, this time, Garrett makes the rules. This city is his gameboard, and Lawrence has no idea what he's stepping into.Ironically enough, neither does Garrett.





	Hideaway

**Author's Note:**

> I love you guys so darn much so thank you for bearing with my constant fandom hopping and also the fact that I write fics for some *kind of* obscure fandoms, like, ????? Where the hell are all the fanfics???

Gossip, it seemed, was a part of the job. The blossoms shared sex tips, the townsfolk slid stories, and the thieves of The City had stolen their fair share of secrets; however, it was throughout the Watch where most of the rumours started and where they managed to spread like wildfire. Watchmen were like housewives, the lot of them.

So, it came as no surprise to Lawrence Eldridge--captain of the South Quarter Watch--that his men doubted him. Well, not so much doubted him in way of skill, nor his strict implement of discipline, but rather how he came to hold the title of captain and how, after pissing of so many criminals, that he'd mamaged to survive this long.

It was, of course, gossip that had confirmed their lack of faith in their captain. Not that he wasn't smart enough to figure it out just by being with them, but he wasn't in the habit of believing mere conclusions, even his own. So he waitied until he had proof, and the proof just happened to take the form of a drunken conversation between a young, far-too-obnoxious boy called Elias (who had just joined the Watch mere weeks prior) and a pretty little bar wench whose breasts seemed far too large for her figure.

Lawrence had watched him, stared at the boy's mouth as each syllable was formed, his drunken slur making it a challenge to read his lips but not impossible to someone as practiced as himself. Words dripped from behind crooked teeth, ignorant and definitely oblivious to the captain's presence as his youthful, blonde stubbled face leaned closer to the woman's chest.

'Not fit to lead,' he'd said, 'deaf and dumb' and that he'd gotten his position through 'pity.'

Lawrence broke his nose with a swift slam against the bar counter and relieved him of his duty, sending him home with a fistfull of his own blood and lucky enough that his superior had been in a decent mood and hadn't sent him to the gallows. But it was true, he knew, that most of his men felt the same and were just too scared of him to say anything. Yes, he was deaf and yes he wasn't technically fit, by Watch standards, to be a guard at all, let alone a captain, but this job was all he knew, and he'd locked up far too many criminals for the higher ups to give a damn about his disability.

Whether or not he was deaf, blind, or couldn't walk, he was sure that, regardless, he would've found a way to make it work and keep tracking his prey, as he had all these years. If his Watch wanted to doubt his ability to serve justice just because he couldn't hear their blabbering nonsense, then maybe they wouldn't doubt him so much when his blade was against his throat or his lash against their backs.

The City was corroded by thieving, murdering, drug dealing filth, and he was going to root out the best of them, with or without the rest of his men. Not because he actually cared for this piss pot of a city, but because he knew that he could. The Watch knew it too, even if they did run their mouths from time to time.

Right now, though, he didn't care who was out strangling who or what family heirloom was being stolen. He cared only for one man, and a slipperly, sly man he was. He knew him only as Garrett: "Master Thief," the liquid shadow of South Quarter or, as he'd often heard him called, a ghost. A myth. A legend.

The beggars revered him. The brothel dwellers feared him. Yet it was all the same to Lawrence. Garrett was a thief; a mark. And he was going to do what that squeaking, peg legged, greasy bastard of a General could never do. He was going to catch the master thief, and he was going to show him just how dillusional his petty sense of freedom actually was.

\---

Halfway across town, far above the problems of the city below, Garrett sat on the ledge of his clocktower window, feet dangling freely over an impossible drop that would surely kill him if he slipped. It was this sort of game with death that kept him on edge just enough to prevent his senses from dulling, or his constant awareness from waning. His leather hood was pulled back from his head, the strong wind ruffling his close cut, dark umber hair and tugging lightly at his unbound cloak.

Basso had given him a job. Nothing simple, of course, but there was a time and a place--specifics to this job--that had Garrett pondering over his sheer amount of free time. And, for lack of a better word, moping at how utterly un-busy he was. There was always stuff to steal; new merchandise, and information found its way into the streets every day, but since the Graven uprising, people had been wary and cautious with their lives and their goods.

But, quite frankly, he was a little tired of knicking his knuckles on taught trap wire, rubbing his hands raw trying to find trick buttons, and digging his calloused fingers deep into wall creavises just to open a damn safe that the actual owner probably couldn't even open.

He wanted a real challenge. Not the everyday commoner schizophrenia kind of challenge, but a real, story worthy challenge. Those loot opportunities had been hard to come by since Orion and Erin...or perhaps it was simply his own distaste for anything he deemed unworthy. Regardless, he was still stuck at home, needing something better to do than wonder just how hard a plant pot would hit the ground from this height.

Swinging his legs back into the safety of his dimly lit abode, Garrett stalked over to one of the desks pushed against the wall on the upper floor of the attic-like space. He kept his newspapers, documents, and letters all stashed away in the drawers of the decrepit table, clipings and wanted posters strewn over the top and even spilling onto the floor to some degree; it was kept tidy enough to not bother him, but cozy enough to feel like he'd been saving them for quite a while.

He pushed aside a few stray entries from his most recent escapade, digging out the most relevant issue of The Emerald Watch.

"Might as well see what's going on in The City, maybe read about some rich men too in over their heads to notice their stuff go missing." He tucked the newspaper beneathe his arm and plodded softly down the small steps before flopping down onto his greyed mattress of a bed. Rolling onto his back and crossing one leg over his propped up knee, he unfolded the paper and layed it against his thigh, holding it just at the corners so it wouldn't droop against his lap and be unreadable. He skimmed the many stories absentmindedly, knowing that he already knew the majority of the "breaking news" before the journalists had even found out. Unexpectedly, as he flipped to the second to last page, a very small yet clearly prestigious article caught his attention.

_Recently Annointed Captain Locks Away More Criminals in Two Years Than The Entire Watch Could in Eight_

Garrett chuckled under his breath. Surely whoever wrote that was in for a rude awakening by the "Entire Watch." They never did take their damaged pride lightly. This new captain though--a man named Eldridge--seemed interesting. More caught criminals in two years than the whole Watch combined in eight? It seemed like a hoax, a publicity act, but there was something about the small, sketched portrait of the man beneathe the article that made the words seem true.

His low, stern brow casted shadows over his down-turned eyes. His face stubbled and marred by scars, similarly to his own; a wide stretched, Y shaped one reached out from where his right ear met his face, down and up across the bridge of his nose, completed by a crooked base that stopped right before his mouth. Two more on the left: one across the far side of his lips, making the top one dip in a bit at the end, and another one just barely on his cheekbone. His short, undercut hair fell ever so slightly in his face as the rest swept back against the shaved sides, rogue strands sticking every which way.

And that was exactly what he looked like: a rogue. Not an unkempt, disorderly bandit, but--ironically--he looked like many thieves that Garrett had met in passing. In fact, he was sure that he'd seen this man before. Maybe fifteen years younger and a lot less scarred, but his visage was certainly familiar.

"Just who are you, Eldridge? And what are you doing in my city?"

 


End file.
